


A Kingdom Built

by winchilsea



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 13:21:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchilsea/pseuds/winchilsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a morning like every other morning and James stares across the bed at the sleeping Q. Naturally, he is brooding—but not for long. Q is good at dissuasion and persuasion both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kingdom Built

Sometimes, there is guilt—guilt for both their ages, for his experience and Q's inexperience. It lingers in the mornings and takes the form of Q's shoulders, black hair at the nape of his neck, and soft, sleep-steeped murmurs: all images of a Q he's never known, but might have existed in another life. A different life, a quieter life. It echoes over the sharpness of Q's ribcage, in every bone that stretches his pale skin, making him all angles that are wont to be smoothed, tempered.

Q is not like him, who has already been ground down, blunt and clumsy. Yes, he is blunt, but not smooth, still rough like sandpaper. Q, though—Q is sharp and smooth. If James isn't careful, he could grind the boy down to nothing. Nothing but ashes and the slick grime of guilt that, while easily swallowed, lingers forever.

"Go back to sleep," Q huffs, eyes flickering behind his lids, the slightest crease forming between his eyebrows. James smoothes it out with his thumb before Q closes a hand around his wrist. "Sleep, please. There's time later for your skeletons."

Because James is contrary in the same way Q is contrary, he sits up on one elbow, runs a hand along the length of Q's body, his back, his shoulders, his skinny arms, and makes himself insufferable.

"You're insufferable," Q mutters right on cue. James doesn't smile, but he wants to, can feel it brewing inside him, turbulent and aching.

He drops a kiss to the back of Q's hand, watching as his fingers—thin, dangerous, capable of wonders that are not always beyond his comprehension—open and close before pressing a kiss to each fingertip. They are in bed and it is dry and warm, a place to feel safe and occasionally guilt, but not over Vesper Lynd. Elsewhere, but not here.

When he looks up again, Q's green eyes are watching him, still sleep-drunk, heavy-lidded, but the spark of danger is still there, the constant analytical process ever-present.

"Good morning," James says, amused when Q squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again, blinking and stretching away the sleep.

He doesn't know how he came to love this boy, only knows that it came in increments, in moments, in separate parts until there were enough that Q, with his own hands, could take them and construct something to last the ages, tinkering and toiling like his affections were a complicated machine made uncomplicated underneath his scrutiny.

Q, who used to find him a mystery, an enigma, a cipher whose key he does not have, seems to be able to penetrate his mind now because he says, "Good morning," with narrowed eyes, rightfully suspicious. "You're being melancholy, aren't you?" he huffs. "Brooding again."

His hand is broad on Q's back, the skin there cool to the touch even through the t-shirt. That is something he liked about Q from the start: he doesn't give the illusion of comfort. Even the light slanting across Q's form is not warm. It is simple, a plain truth that is bold and unapologetic. When James looks at Q, he sees machinery and efficiency, the cold touch of something that belongs less to humanity and more to genius, but this has become the equivalent of comfort to him after all this time. Q arches his back, lets himself be pulled across the bed and into James's arms.

A soft, exasperated sigh, resigned and fond, comes from Q, who aligns his body to fit with James's, sharp angles jarring against blunt sides, catching on the chips and chinks that no one can ever find except Q, because Q is always the exception to everything.

James rests himself back on the pillow, lets Q in turn use his shoulder as one, and presses a kiss against the mess of Q's hair, unruly for now from sleep, and doesn't smell anything. But he imagines that, in a different life, he'd smell lavender or citrus shampoo, and really, James doesn't want a different life.

"Have you ever wondered," James starts, lips still in Q's hair, "about the people we could have been?"

"No," comes the easy answer, half-annoyed. "For God's sake, James, go back to bed."

"We're already in bed."

"Must I kick you out of it?"

"You wouldn't."

There's a shifting of limbs, sharp elbows knocking into him and bony knees being ungentle as Q realigns himself, cold hands greedy on James's body. 

"No, I wouldn't." He doesn't sound abashed, just factual. While Q may have unraveled him, James is sometimes uncertain of Q, even now.

"I'm hardly a mystery," Q said once, not amused but distracted with something that was more important than James in that moment. "That would be you, 007, with your wits and your wiles." 

James didn't call Q a liar then and there, but he should have, just to see his reaction, whether he would have broken his trance to cast James a withering glare, whether James would have merited more than an irritated crinkle around his eyes. That's okay, five months later, Q started to unfold.

If James gave in inch by inch, it can be said that Q stood his ground until he unceremoniously took the plunge—undignified, but Q bore it with his head held high—sudden and bursting like a switch was flipped, a circuit completed. The individual parts meant nothing until everything was in order. This is what they are now: a well-oiled machine that keeps running and running, built to last no matter the rust that accumulates, the beatings and the rough handling.

They fight often, not with fists—although James let it happen once and the broken ribs he earned were expected but still a surprise—but with words, and where he is an expert at deflecting, at bending words and turning them to his favor, Q's words cleave, unrepentantly slicing through sinew and bone.

Q rarely ever says something he doesn't mean, even in the heat of the moment, and James has learned to live with this one great flaw that fractures into smaller flaws, manifesting itself in Q's arrogance and pride and ego.

"It's too early for your broodings," Q says against his skin, breath warm and damp.

Throwing a leg over Q and pulling him closer, James says, "No, it's too late," and earns a laugh, brief and short, nothing more than a sharp exhale. For that, James cups the side of Q's face, thumb sweeping over his cheekbone, and kisses the corner of his mouth, lingering but not pushing, because Q abhors morning breath.

Their limbs move of their own accord, with practiced ease and a confidence that comes from having already mastered this dance.

The next kiss is against the underside of Q's jaw and he bites down on the skin there, soothes it with his tongue and then his thumb when his hand drifts down to rest against Q's neck. The other hand winds into Q's hair, fingers digging into his scalp as James turns his weight against Q, not quite putting him on his back, but almost.

Unlike James, Q doesn't linger softly. Instead, he is efficient, cold fingers digging into his hipbones just beneath the waistband of his boxers before sliding completely into them. The quick sensation of his cold touch makes James gasp against Q's clavicle where he's pulled the collar of his shirt down.

"Always in a rush," James says, sliding a hand up under Q's shirt.

"Sorry, you mean that wasn't foreplay earlier?" Q returns, and it's James's turn to laugh.

What happens next is easy, familiar. Clothes being shed, hands fumbling, mouths open, the wet sounds of Q breathing harshly into his ear, curses spilling from his lips.

"Shit," Q hisses when James wraps a hand around them both, "shit, shit, shit." The sheets around their legs slip off the bed, which is shaking just a little, and it's good, so good, better than anything.

Q is close to falling apart underneath him, gasping. "Let it go," James murmurs. "Go on, let it go. Let it go."

A ragged groan falls from Q before he presses their mouths together, teeth biting down, and grinds himself against James, his own hand reaching down to join James's. The cold press of Q's thumb against his slit is outweighed by its roughness, the intensity of the sparks that flare. James comes first, like it's practically wrenched from him, and he keeps encouraging Q even as he's riding out the aftershocks.

"Let go, let me see you," he rasps against Q's mouth, and swallows the croon that escapes when Q tips over the edge as well.

Chest still heaving—his ribcage expanding so far that James fears the bones might rip through skin—Q says, "It's your turn to wash the sheets, I believe."

So it is, but he gathers Q back into his arms.

"Sleep," he says.

"Now he wants to sleep," Q mutters, but he lays his head down and they let themselves drift off for a little while longer.

When next he wakes, Q has a mug of Earl Grey and a laptop, still naked underneath the sheets and unashamed.

"Good morning again," Q says without looking away from the screen, though the corner of his mouth lifts slightly.

James rolls himself onto his stomach and reaches to run his fingers over the sharp jut of Q's hipbone. "Not afternoon yet?" he asks.

"In about five minutes."

He makes a thoughtful noise and watches Q who, in the comfort of their bedroom, does not stare blankly forward. Here, Q grimaces when something goes awry, sighing and huffing and open in his exasperation because it seems he is rarely ever pleased. It's a wonderful sight because he's developed a solid poker face over the years, unwaveringly blank and shut off, his tone pitched dry and unamused. James, though, found a tell in his blinking, which is something Q hasn't yet gotten rid of to this day: the rapid blinks when he's putting up a front, the ones that last longer than they should when tensions are high.

He watches now as Q wrinkles his nose and asks, "Aren't you tired of that?" James doesn't answer and Q turns toward him, glasses sliding down his nose. "All these years and you're still not tired of turning over those same thoughts again and again."

The hand rubbing circles into Q's hipbone stills briefly, but doesn't stop. Between them, the unspoken comment—which will be gentler now than it ever has been before if uttered—rears its head. 

When MI6 decommissioned him, Q sipped his tea, indifferent, and said, "Age has caught up to you at last, I see." In the days following, James was angry and Q was patient until he couldn't be, the words he carefully padded finally unsheathing, cutting into him as precise as a scalpel as they laid truths bare.

"Age catches up to everyone, James," Q said as James sat at the kitchen table, hunched over. "The fact is, you are now obsolete."

"Don't make me out to be one of your toys," James said, knocking back another shot of the truly awful vodka Q kept in the cabinets. "You and your machines."

Taking the bottle from him, Q dumped its meager contents into the sink and said, "You and your humanity."

Here, in the present, James smirks and says, "Maybe I miss how deliciously young you were."

Q, who hasn't really aged at all, says, "No, you don't," and lets the matter drop, though his blinks come slower.

Right. James is an old man—too old to be playing spy, according to some people—and Q is no longer a boy, if ever he was one.

With a sigh, Q sets aside his laptop, says, "Come here," and lets James lay his head down in his lap. It's all horribly domestic and quiet, Q's fingers threading through his hair, the kisses that they both pepper whenever skin is in reach, the soft affirmation of love that Q huffs out when James smiles up at him, devious and ready for round two.

"At least brush your teeth," Q says, but neither of them moves just yet. James will eventually because he does want that second round and they're both past due for a shower, but he's content enough for now.

Content and guilty. Guilty for this drowning affection that has consumed them, and, like fire and fuel, has them burning away until there will be nothing but ashes and vapors forming false hopes for drowning men. James catches Q's hand, presses a kiss to his wrist, and thinks of lifeboats and selfishness.

He suspects that Q, who understands the cardinal drive for purpose in others—in James, first and foremost and greatest of all—and kindly looks the other way, is sharing in his sentiments.

**Author's Note:**

> Self-indulgent fluff that really should not have gotten so long.


End file.
